A year ago, I wasn’t sanguine about the state of ultra-low-budget filmmaking; this year, the D.I.Y. domain accounts for many of the best new releases. What I’m still not sanguine about is the economic prospects for such movies,...
What a year, eh? In podcasts, as everywhere else lately, volatility abounds—yet beauty and wonder abound, too. Ongoing budget cuts (and debatable decision-making) meant that we lost more terrific shows in the past year—how I’ve missed you, “Heavyweight”!—but...
There is perhaps no moment in history when being a music critic felt like a respectable, lucrative, or essential position, though there are certainly years when it maybe seemed more fun—long before the mobilization of seething fan armies,...
The Shapiro brothers, Gefen and Yona, who are nineteen and sixteen and Harpo Marx look-alikes, own eleven cars between them, including a Girl Scout-green 1972 MG Midget, a blueberry-blue 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider, and a 1926 Chevy truck...
Unexpected juxtapositions like these appear across the photographer Ali Al Shehabi’s series “As I Lay Between Two Seas,” which documents the contours of everyday life in Bahrain. Taken over the course of three years, from 2020 to 2023,...
A good joke doesn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. It exists in the context of all in which it lives and what came before it. And so it’s worth considering the mood on July 15th, the...
Leftovers, eaten the day after, or maybe late the night of, are the best part of Thanksgiving. The performance of the big meal is done, the mood has relaxed, the more distasteful guests are long gone. You are...
Using “the Internet” sometimes seems disconcertingly synonymous with using Google. Google Search, the most popular search engine on the planet, indexes the open Internet, driving traffic to Web sites, and Google Ads provides the revenue that publishers survive...
On social media, rewarding oneself with “little treats” has become a de rigueur form of performative self-care. Did the laundry? You deserve a matcha latte. Filed your quarterly taxes? Time for a gel manicure. Animating the trend is...
